


Promenade

by sunbug1138



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alderaanian Diaspora, Arkanis (Star Wars), F/M, Geology, Hosnian Prime, Marriage, Tatooine, Tusken Raider, outsider POV of canon events, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 19:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbug1138/pseuds/sunbug1138
Summary: A newly wed couple go for a walk...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Postcards from the Galactic Edge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13706421) by [sunbug1138](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbug1138/pseuds/sunbug1138). 



> When I started on the initial plotting for Postcards from the Galactic Edge I drew a lot of inspiration from John Jackson Miller's novel Kenobi. Not in terms of plot but I really wanted to provide a sequel of sorts to it as well as to [The Art of Broken Pieces](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13060209/chapters/29873247), the excellent fanfic that started me off on this writing journey.
> 
> As I work on Postcards, teasing details, ideas for shorter supporting stories often pop into my head, usually dealing with Ben and Rey's increasingly frustration misadventures before finally putting down roots of sorts on Tatooine such as Adrift and the Canto Bight Caper, in this instance it was two original characters whose actions in the past have a certain amount of bearing on current events.
> 
> This story is set around 17 ABY - about twenty two years before Rey, Ben and Ari’li settle on Tatooine. It features two original characters who have already been mentioned in passing in Postcards. This is a bit of a world building piece; it, hopefully, adds some depth and colour to the other work without necessarily being required reading. 
> 
> Truth be told I fell in love with these two and just wanted to write about them.

The twins were not quite halfway to their zenith when the lookout first spotted the pair approaching Bildor’s Canyon. The terrain was bathed in a light that was still young and soft. He watched their progress with idle curiosity. They were the most interesting thing he had seen for years; no one seemed to come this way anymore.

 

A decade or so earlier there had been a sudden, and to the Tuskens at least, unexplained, large-scale exodus of settlers, leaving behind a much smaller population which seemed disinclined to continue what, for a while, had been a relentless push into the Tusken’s territory. Since that time the tribes, what few remained, were given a wide berth and led a mostly untroubled existence; raising families, Banthas and hunting the Krayt dragons whose numbers had begun to climb again. The settlers had a word for it that Tuskens spat at; they would, in their ignorance, call it ‘peaceful’. Tuskens knew better. Life was not peaceful; you came into the world fighting and would fight until the bitter end, however, and whenever that might be.

 

These two didn’t look much like any settlers he had seen before. The fact they were walking immediately set them apart; settlers preferring to travel around in their damnable speeders. Machinery in general remained an anathema to the Tuskens. Over a half century earlier his own tribe had made a grudging exception for the vaporator which had become the heart of their settlement, a symbol of the Tusken practice of taking whatever they wanted; whether it was supplies from settlers or precious moisture from the capricious clouds.

 

At a distance, with their limbs tightly swathed in fabric and their heads covered to provide protection against the harsh sunlight, a younger Tusken might have understandably mistaken the walkers for members of another clan. They might have indeed passed as Tusken had their face wrappings, or lack thereof, not given them away.

 

They were a few paces short of the mouth of the canyon which led to interior of the Wastes where the tribe’s encampment was situated, when the shorter of the two stumbled slightly, halted and sat down to adjust their footwear. For a moment he considered raising the alarm or simply picking them off before they could intrude any further, but something stayed his hand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Curious Stones, Irritating Sand and Liberal Seasoning.

 

“Kriff!”

 

Nico, who had been striding along, his mind focused solely on their destination and what might transpire once they arrived, snapped out of his reverie and turned back sharply.

 

“Corah?”

 

“Another damned pebble has managed to get into my boot!” His companion whined through gritted teeth as she hobbled over to a small boulder and sat down. She shrugged off the satchel she had slung across her chest and dropped it to the ground before unwinding the coarse fabric wrapping around her left boot. With each turn of fabric a shower of sand tumbled to the ground.

 

“Kriffing sand gets everywhere,” she muttered. As a geologist she’d been to plenty of rocky, desert worlds but the sand on this one seemed to have an innate ability to get anywhere and everywhere she’d not encountered before.

 

Her husband knelt before her and helped tug off the form-fitting, knee-high boot. As Corah massaged her bruised foot, Nico tipped it out and a small, round green stone skittered to the ground.

 

“It’s tiny!” He remarked, picking it up.

 

“Don’t let its size fool you.” Corah retorted, plucking the stone from his palm. She turned it over in one gloved hand before holding it up to catch the light. As she turned it first one way and then another, she hummed to herself in that way Nico recognised as an indication that her interest was piqued. She picked up her satchel and rifled about in it until she found what she was hunting for. She wrapped the stone carefully in a swatch of soft cloth before placing it back in the satchel. She then picked up her boot and gave it a finale shake before pulling it back on and replacing the leg wrappings. Nico held out a hand to her and helped her to her feet.

 

“Better?”

 

Corah wiggled her toes and nodded.

 

“Much. How much further is it?” She asked, trying hard to keep her growing irritation at bay as her eyes travelled over the rock face rising up before them. There was nothing she found particularly interesting in the strata of this section of the Jundland Wastes, and she didn’t hold out much hope for the geology of the area they were about to enter.

 

“Just a few hours’ walk.”

 

Corah grimaced.

 

“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t take the speeder. It would easily fit through here.” She said waving a hand towards the cleft ahead of them.

 

“I know, but I have my reasons. Trust me, it’s better to walk.” He replied, a broad grin stealing across his face revealing his one, lopsided dimple. She countered with her own smaller smile, rolling her eyes in a mixture of amusement and mild exasperation.

 

As they trudged over the canyon’s uneven floor, gravel occasionally shifting precariously underfoot, Corah stole a glance at her husband of not quite a month.

 

It never ceased to amaze her how he always managed to be so relentlessly optimistic, if not downright cheerful. By rights, more than anyone else she knew, he should be one of the most bitter and angry people in the galaxy.

 

While she had grown up on Arkanis, shielded from the worst of the Empire’s actions and the fall out from the Galactic Civil War, he, as a child, had been caught up in the persecution of the Alderaanian diaspora in the aftermath of that world’s destruction.

 

They had been roused in the middle of the night and forcibly removed from their homes and taken to camps to wait out the “Emergency”, for their own safety - according to the Empire’s tireless propagandists - lest any violent partisan groups attempt to exploit them.

 

Nico and his family along with many others had spent nearly five years in ever worsening conditions in a draughty derelict factory until the day word reached Coruscant of the Battle of Endor, the destruction of the hitherto unknown second Death Star and the death of the Emperor.

 

He had been quite forthright in his relation of the circumstances to her. Where she had felt her pulse speed up with growing anger he remained infuriatingly calm. As far as he was concerned it was in the past and getting angry wasn’t going to change what had happened. If it looked like events of a similar nature were about to happen again, that’s when he’d do something.

 

Most of Corah’s family had been, and still were, behind closed doors, staunch supporters of Sheev Palpatine and his policies. Her father was an amiable sort, but not exactly known for his sharp mind, preferring to follow the lead of others, nodding along in agreement with the loudest speaker in the room. The general consensus seemed to be that as far as they were concerned the planet-killer space stations were little more than flimsy Rebel lies, curiously lacking in unbiased corroboration.

 

Even though under the New Republic, Arkanis thrived and prospered, the nostalgia for a particular, rose-tinted version of the quarter century of Empire, only seemed to grow, worryingly unfettered.

 

As she grew older her opinion of her family, and her uncle in particular, swung from considering them simply misguided to willing apologists or worse. It had been an major factor in her resisting all attempts for her to be enrolled in any junior legislator programmes. Instead she had thrown herself headlong into geology. She knew she had only been indulged because her uncle, who held a worrying amount of sway over her father, had judged it to be potentially useful to him to have a tame geologist on hand at some point in the future. So she pointedly drew out her studies as long as possible in the hope that he would lose interest or forget about her entirely as his burgeoning political career took up more and more of his time.

 

Corah had met Nico barely a year earlier at a social gathering for new staff at the university on Hosnian Prime. She was never at her best at such functions. Socialising was not her forte and she found it to be the most mentally exhausting aspect of her job. She bitterly missed the small cadre of friends she’d collected during her time on Ryloth. The only thing to be said for this new post was that it didn’t involve any teaching. No more standing in terror before a group of eager faces. A fear she covered by assuming a demeanour that led her to being bestowed the moniker of the _Rock Crystal Bitch_. As the term wore on, and she relaxed in to her job, her students revised their initial assessment from mean and aloof to tough but fair. No one was more surprised than she when more than one former student hugged her or shook her hand warmly at the small surprise farewell party her colleagues had thrown for her a few weeks earlier.

 

Now she was at a far larger gathering, hugging an alcove wall, entranced by the young man who seemed to make connecting with people so effortless. She knew he was new as well, they’d been on the same transport for the last leg of the journey to the Hosnian System and she’d overheard him chatting with the couple sitting with him. That wasn’t quite true she told herself, she’d actively listened to every word he’d said. His ability to draw people in seemed to extend to even herself when she was on the periphery.

 

Ordinarily such a social butterfly as he would have irritated her, showing up her own shortcomings, but strangely she found she was happy - content even - to nurse her drink and watch him as he moved between groups alternating between talking animatedly and listening intently.

 

 _At least he actually listens to people_ , she thought. His abundance of auburn curls bouncing as he gesticulated. He was now closer to her than he’d been all evening and snippets of his story wafted over to her.

 

“…came out to find them _seasoning_ the general!” His hair bounced again as he energetically mimed the action of someone over-salting a dish of food.

 

One of the knot of people around him, a stocky Twi-lek, scoffed incredulously. “Oh really. That sounds like hyperbole of the highest order, if not a total fabrication Nico!”

 

The scoffer’s companion, a young woman who had already struck Corah as being rather insipid, nodded adding, “I agree. Have you seen them? They’re just so adorable! They look like a child’s toy!”

 

Corah involuntarily let out an audible huff of exasperation and rolled her eyes so much it hurt, just as Nico turned and caught her eye. Hurriedly, she looked away and took a hasty sip from her now, empty glass.

 

_Oh maker, he’s actually coming over._

 

Mortification over came her and her ears prickled with panic as he excused himself and came over to her, pausing only to exchange his glass for a full one from a tray held by apassing server.

 

He handed it to her and took her empty glass as he remarked without ceremony, “You must be Dr Valarian. From the Geology department.”

 

Corah nodded dumbly. She took a grateful, fortifying sip before adding, “That’s correct. How did you know?”

 

Nico turned slightly, waving a hand towards the chattering throng, “Process of elimination. I’ve already been introduced to everyone else.”

 

 _Or everyone else introduced themselves to you,_ she thought. He had such an easy air, it was no wonder that people naturally gravitated towards him.

 

She realised that she was frowning again.

 

“Is it true?” She asked abruptly, with far more force than she had intended.

 

He appeared momentarily taken aback.

 

“Pardon?”

 

“About the general, I mean.”

 

He grinned and shrugged, “In essentials. Yes. I’m not entirely sure that they really got as far as actually seasoning him. But they did have every intention of cooking him.”

 

“And just where _did_ you hear this tall tale?” Corah asked, a small smile forming on her lips.

 

“Oh straight from the Bantha’s mouth.”

 

Corah raised one thing eyebrow. “We _are_ taking about the same man who repeatedly rounded down his Kessel Run?”

 

“True,” Nico laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me that he wasn’t rescued from Jabba the Hutt by means of a high stakes Sabacc game.”

 

Corah nearly snorted her drink through her nose.

 

“But that’s my job, keeping track of all the embellishments and omissions in an effort to hopefully winkle out the truth. But also to preserve the tall tales, they have their merits.”

 

Now somewhat recovered Corah attempt to take another sip of her drink. “I couldn’t do that. It would drive me mad. I like being able to break open a seam and see the the facts laid out before me.”

 

Nico chuckled, “Unfortunately it’s generally frowned upon to crack open people’s skulls to get at the truth.”

 

Corah threw back her head and laughed. It was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. She smiled widely at his dumbfounded expression, and they both knew, in that instant, that they would spend the rest of their lives together.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](alicestill.tumblr.com) feel free to drop by and say hi!


End file.
